Mommy's Best Games, Inc. is an independent game developer founded in 2007. Our seventh game, currently in development, is Pig Eat Ball on which we started working in 2013. This is behind the scenes thoughts about game development and marketing.

Saturday, June 30, 2018

Goal Types

Pig Eat Ball has a large Adventure mode filled with a variety of action-puzzle levels.
Beating action levels are how you progress the story in Adventure mode.
There are 3 main 'goal types'.

Eat All Balls: every level requires that you eat all the balls to complete the level. It's sort of like a free-form 'puzzle' version of Pac-Man levels. There's no special restriction here, just figure out how to do it.

Timed Eat Balls: You still have to eat all the balls, but now there's a time restriction.

Survival Eat Balls: You can only take three hits of damage, or you fail the level. The goal is still to eat all the balls.

You won't get to pick the mode; it will be particular to each hand-designed level. The levels in the game have been designed by myself and Andrew Curry. If a
level is introducing a new enemy or level object, it will probably have the easiest goal which is Eat All Balls. Once you've seen a certain enemy, new levels with new designs will probably require tougher goals like Timed or Survival.

Medals

Every action level is timed. Your "time-to-complete" the level is checked and you are awarded 1 of 3 medals. Bronze, Silver, and Gold.
Bronze means you completed the level. It's the easiest version.
A Silver time is a little tougher. And a Gold time means you completed the level pretty fast!
All of the Medal times are hand-designed and balanced. As we get closer to finishing the game, we're constantly playing the levels and looking at metrics to balance the Medal times.

We won the Pearl from this Royal Clam. It had 4 action levels to beat.

Gold Clams

Pig Eat Ball is meant to be a "good challenge". It's not supposed to be the hardest game ever, and it's not supposed to be a baby's game either. It will feel tougher than a Kirby or Yoshi game, but much easier than a Super Meat Boy or Dark Souls. I'm trying to hit the Super Mario Galaxy difficulty.

However, there are some tough challenges in the game. Getting a Gold medal on any given level requires some skills! And the toughest levels in the game are in the Gold Clams.

That Royal Clam (upper left) has four levels for you to beat. You can see the shadows of four medals under him.

Action levels are given to you by Royal Clams. If you get a Gold medal on every level in a given world, a new section opens up. This gives you access to the Gold Clam. The levels these clams have are pretty tough. If you beat all of the Gold Clam levels in a world, you get access to the special, custom Disguise with unique gameplay abilities!

Polishing the Gold

This is a level from world 1 Gold Clam, it's a tough but satisfying challenge!

That's where development is at right now. We're almost done designing all the Gold Clam levels, and actually almost done with all the levels in the game!
It's a very exciting time.
Pretty soon we'll be able to test the game from start to finish. I'm pumped to see that finally happen.